Short Fiction in Gaming

I recently played The Static Speaks My Name and was taken by the ability of the developers to deliver such a powerful story that can be played from start to finish in 10 minutes. It made me think that video games have a great deal of untapped potential as a medium for short fiction. I would love to see an anthology of these short, 10-20 minute games, one that would accumulate to a length of about 10-12 hours.

Without giving too much away about the plot, The Static Speaks My Name would work wonderfully as a single installment in a anthology of video games that deal heavily with themes of insanity and suicide. This opens up the possibility for a video game equivalent of thematically unified short fiction anthologies, such as Borges’ Labyrinths, or John Barth’s Lost In The Funhouse. Games like The Static Speaks My Name and The Stanley Parable are a great start, and I hope that they are but a hint of what is to come.